The Wildling, and Other Abstract Tales
by Incapacitating-strike
Summary: We are not called to give up our narcissistic natures as adults, so how does one unlearn it? Who's blood matters anymore? To treasure a person is to invest in fool’s gold.


Blood is expensive. It can be bought. It can be sold. It can be stolen, bartered for, and swindled out of. It is the most luxurious currency.

On principal, one should never allow the value of one's own blood to drop below a certain threshold of worth, as not all bloods are created equal.

For instance, the value in that of familial blood lines, and the value of that in blood brothers are not necessarily close at all. In fact, they can hardly be even considered comparable.

Blood pacts are unbreakable deals. To break a deal with one's own blood is to condemn one's soul to Oblivion.

Princely blood is something to keep for the ages. It mustn't be squandered, but the sad truth in this is that princely blood hardly ever knows its true value, as sometimes a symbol is more powerful than the thing itself, as with all currency. Men spend all their lives chasing it, throw themselves into hilarious debt for it, and are left hollow and old in spite of it all.

Yes, blood is the most expensive and debt-worthy, most depreciating to the owner, and most luxurious to those who are owed it. The disappointment in spending blood is that it is usually done anonymously, without the owner even being slightly aware of the transaction as it happens. Assassins and soldiers, ruffians and thugs have the best of it. They see the buying and selling in real time, and for that they are aware of its true worth.

It is a fool who chases after money instead of bartering with the blood in his veins.

To the sentimental, the blood in the heart of the fool is worth all the world.

To all of us deemed fools, so be it.

The Malorn tribe was one of extremely curious blood. Their town in the south of Greenshade kept them near the ocean, and so they always smelled distinctly of salt. To call them a tribe implies almost a level of savegery, to the reader, but that is the opposite, and they were a level headed people, as were most of the tribes in Greendshade. What the women lacked in refinery, they often made up for in generally acceptable physical form and useful transferable skills, such as gardening or hunting. What the men lacked in physical prowess, they made up for in sheer dumb luck and a lovely cadence in speech. That is not to say the entirety of the Malorn tribe was tactless and weak, physically speaking, just that their particular bloodline seemed to breed something in them that wasn't specifically spectacular.

They were wonderfully ordinary, for the most part. They often found themselves in less need of gardening due to the environment's prevalent sand and ocean, and lacking proper social interactions for the level of charisma some of them seemed to posess. Wholeheartedly, a good number of them would never amount to anything more than perfect mediocrity, and that was quite often a good thing, for the simplicity in their way of life led to a well meaning nature in the men and women. There was never anything wrong with being simple and charming, and a value for that was prevalent in all the tribe, and rightly so.

As with all families, however, there are always a couple odd ones out. That's not to say each member of the tribe didn't posess anything different about them, just that as a whole they had shared values, as that's the simplest way to keep a group of people together.

To call those who severely broke from the pattern the black sheep of the tribe would be harsh, as they did their best to put on mediocrity in the kind matter that the rest of the tribe did. Occasionally, a striking personality will enter one's life and force subtle changes. It doesn't always work in tandem when said striking personality is integrated into a piece of larger society, as they tend to infect the more impressionable of the flock. For a sweet, simple people, it seemed out of place, but their good nature would often prevent them from speaking out about it from anywhere but behind closed doors, and even then it was never unfairly rude, except perhaps among older members of the tribe.

For these odd few, their personalities are what one could call emphasized, as the traditional traits of the Malorn tribe were still there, but perhaps the charismatic nature was nearly overwhelming, and the cadence in speech a song so sweet it provoked that which was near illness. Or, perhaps, the physical prowess was notable, or the ability to pull outside influence to the ocean village was unsettling in its frequency. Not the worst of circumstances, but these types had the bad habit of attracting much more outside attention than ever hoped for by the more typical members of the tribe, but the outcome had never been particularly catastrophic, so the majority of people never had any real reason to complain. Overall, the occurence was generally inconvienient. Deviation from the norm, in any form, always was.

It so happened that one of these striking personalities, who should only just now be mentioned to take center stage in the story, was one of extreme personal inconvienience and one who attracted much attention wherever she went, and it delighted her to no end.

Shelki had always been a stand-out, stand-up girl, but she knew how to use her subtlties in the most graceful of ways. One could easily compare her to a dragon's tongue, or a wild mountain flower, that is to say, she was quite beautiful. She wore chartreuse and had bright red hair, hunted with those oddly skilled women, and found endless pleasure in romantically taunting the good natured boys of the village, who against the better judgement of their elders, fell prey to her sweet nothings.

Shelki spent many days of her late girlhood in the forests with the other girls, taking up her spear and tumbling to the forest floor to avoid the crimson stained tusks of some wild boar, feeling a strange high from the encounter, and throwing herself into the tussle with such an energy that the village boys said she should've joined the aldmeri army, had she not been a lovely young lady. Yes, the military would be a waste of such lively grace, and they enjoyed the fruit of her hunts too.

She had the most peculiar habit of investing herself so wholly in a conversation, leaning emphatically over the tavern tables, her hands folded in a near prayer gesture, gazing up with her hazel doe eyes at the young man across the table, giving the impression of hanging on his every word. Occasionally, she would reach out and touch his wrist. The boy would blush. As one would imagine, she found the process enrapturing.

She was a person who enveloped and overpowered the atmosphere wherever she went, and was quite out of place in that quiet town.

And in that quiet town, at the age of 19, a perfectly mediocre boy would propose to her, and with inconvienience to her own flirtacious and vivacious nature, she would accept. Maybe she thought she could encourage him to match her.

Like everyone else, her influence only stretched so far.

Daren was a boy with an inherent uptight nature, and his form reflected it. He was quite tall, very much built strongly in the shoulders for a young bosmeri man, but his forearms were too willowly for his frame. He had a strong jawline, but too wiry a beard to make a good showing of it. He adhered to the generally shy nature of the public, but was quick to point out what he saw as different, or disturbing the peace.

Some said he lost his father too soon, and could've been a better man if he'd had help for just a year or two longer.

Nevertheless, the townspeople greatly approved of the match, for despite their inherit general acceptance of Shelki as one of their own, and their tolerance of her nature, they very much hoped her marriage to the young man would settle her down a tad.

He would prove utterly underwhelming, and a simple boy who despite his extreme fondness for her beauty, felt truly stifled by her black sheep personality. He owned a small plot of land, an inheritance from his father who had passed the year before, leaving the boy alone and with a small sum of money, and no one to urge him to pursue a less exciting girl. Alas, as he had no one to do so, and perhaps he wanted to prove himself a cut above the other young men, who had always pick at him so incredously in their younger years, he set his sights on Shelki, who proved a bigger trouble to handle than he'd previously expected. He was quite used to the gentle and shy women he'd always known his town to own.

He came to find that whenever Shelki would set out to accomplish some task requiring a certain level of physical strength that he himself had trouble with, he would become wrought with irritability, and seek to find some way within their household to upset her. In truth, he quickly came to resent his wife. Had she just been a little less alluring, a bit less persuasive with others, a bit slower all around, then perhaps he could've truly loved her, or have told himself that he did.

And Shelki, who noticed his easy irritability within the first few months of their marriage, quickly came to frequently distance herself from him, finding a deeper passion, almost a complusion for hunting and skinning the animals she found in the forests and fields. Perhaps, it was purely theraputic.

Perhaps, she pictured the animals she skinned to be her husbands hands, cutting away with red spectral knives-like many of the woman of that village had learned to do- at the flesh where it would've sought to touch her. Or, maybe around the face where it held so much contempt for her.

The townspeople quickly lost hope in the settlement of Shelki's provocative and exciting nature, so to speak.

There was one night in particular, both parties stifled wrath seemed to boil over and break loose. Perhaps she had been too flirtacious, or Darren too drunk and publically abrasive to her, but whatever the reason, neither of them saw it fit to settle it like adults.

Darren dragged Shelki out of the tavern by the forearm (her arms bore many bruises at that time, as did Darren's shoulders), spitting and cursing like a sailor under his breath. Shelki wrenched her arm free after a particular remark, and pulling her fist back with a renewed vigor, despite being fairly intoxicated, and struck him roughly across the jaw.

He reeled back, releasing her arm, clearly thrown off by the forceful punch. He steadied himself, and then lunged for her, his hands winding around her slender neck and forcing her to the ground.

She screeched out some high pitched insult, the two tumbling to the dirt, and letting her hunting blades form around her hands, prepared to strike home at his neck.

The patrons of the tavern had gathered outside to watch, and seeing the situation begin to escalate severely, two men rushed in a panicked manner to pull Darren off of Shelki, struggling to get his hands to release her neck, before she could retaliate and gut him like a fish, which she clearly intended to.

Shelki sprang to her feet, her hair tussled, giving her the appearance of some lovely, cornered wild animal. She lept towards him, before one of the men grabbed her around the waist.

"Shelki! It's over! Go home and settle down, we'll take Darren to the healer to sober up."

It was a good minute before the man felt confident enough to let her go, lest she spring at Darren again with fatal intention. When he set her down, she stood still for a moment, not taking her eyes off Darren. That was a ferocity that said many things, and none of them implied a happy marriage. Darren stared back, clenching and unclenching his fists. The other man had not let him go yet.

Shelki shook the blades from her hands, and shooting Darren one last cold look, began to walk home in a dignified manner, though they could all see her hand slip up to her neck to rub at where Darren had seized her neck.

The townspeople never saw an incident like that again, and it seemed they never saw Darren or Shelki together anymore. Any semblance of a good married life had gone out the window.

But, this is where the personalities of those with such influence over others proves detrimental to the norm of such simple people with such idyllic lives, for Shelki, for all her beauty and interesting personability, is not the subject of this story. Shelki, for all her influence did not pass it to her husband, but to her daughter, who was born within the second year of their marriage. If the girl had not been born, it is very likely Shelki would not have stayed with the man, for the two had come to be unable to stand each other.

She had felt completely unsatisfied with her acceptance of his proposal, his treatment of her, how set he was in his ways, the furrow in his eyebrows hen she laughed a bit too loud or spoke with a smile to another man. It built up in her, until she was almost never at home with him, for she could not stand to be within any walls with him for a period of time more than a few hours.

But to Shelki, none of that mattered anymore when she saw her daughter.

For all the trials of a chaotic marriage, the bond between mothers and daughters will always be something completely unique in its dynamic. As she would come to find, raising a daughter meant eventually having to explain one's trauma, and having to shield that young girl from her husband. Yes, the process of motherhood and childhood was understanding a mother's hardships, and maybe forgiving her for it.

But luckily, Brïka, as she came to be named was the sort of daughter who could love her mother through anything, and would grow to be the sort of girl who would've given anything for her mother's happiness and wellbeing, just as Shelki would always do for her.

Honestly, had Shelki not given birth to a daughter, there would likely have been nothing to stop her from killing Darren in those early years, for she hated the man with her whole heart.

So, Shelki looked down at her little girl, her infant eyes not even opened yet, her little hands outstretched up, reaching for her, depending on her.

Nothing else mattered.

Nothing, not her marriage, not her uneventful life, not her influential nature could ever come between her and her daughter.

Yes, this was love.

No one else would ever matter again.


End file.
